Syria: explosions kill scores in Alawite villages

Scores of civilians belonging to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad's minority sect have been killed in gunfire and explosions, as the US blacklisted an al Qaeda-linked rebel group it accuses of hijacking the uprising.

Rebel fighters sit at a gun position in the Sheikh Suleiman base, some 25 kilometres (15 miles) northwest of the city of Aleppo.Photo: AFP/Getty

11:41PM GMT 11 Dec 2012

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Britain-based watchdog, had earlier reported that 125 civilians had been killed or hurt by a string of bomb attacks. Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman later clarified that an unknown number of the victims were in fact fighters.

"Between 125 and 150 people were killed or hurt by gunshots and explosions in the village of Aqrab," Mr Abdel Rahman told AFP.

"The Observatory calls on the United Nations to establish an independent inquiry of Syrian, Arab and international jurists whose transparency is proven, to investigate events in Aqrab as well as other massacres in Syrian towns and cities," the watchdog added.

Aqrab is some 25 miles from the city of Hama, the provincial capital. Some two-thirds of its inhabitants are Sunni, and the rest are Alawite.

An activist who identified himself as Abu Ghazi told AFP via the internet that most of the Sunni residents of Aqrab fled last week when the regime shelled the village.

Amateur video posted online by activists showed several injured people lying in field hospitals.

One video showed an anti-regime activist interviewing two teenagers, clearly wounded and shocked by the violence.

"A group of men used civilians as human shields to protect themselves, and threatened them with making a gas tank explode... to kill everybody," said the activist, repeating a claim made by one of the wounded.

"Shabiha (pro-regime militiamen) came to us, claiming they were going to protect us from the rebels," said another wounded youth. "They stopped us from leaving the house, and killed my father, my mother and my brother."

Aqrab lays near Houla, which on May 25 saw a massacre of 108 people, among them 49 children and 34 women.

The UN said there were "strong suspicions" that pro-government militiamen were involved in the Houla massacre.

Hama province is home to a patchwork of religious communities which have coexisted for centuries, but sectarian tensions there have run high ever since the outbreak of the revolt against Mr al-Assad's rule in March last year.

"The rebels took over a checkpoint near Aqrab just over a week ago," said Mr Abdel Rahman.